Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a method for refining a disparity or motion estimation map of an image at image regions a user has marked. The disclosure also relates to a video post processing system for refining a disparity/motion estimation map of an image at image regions a user has marked. Further, the present disclosure relates to a computer program and a non-transitory computer readable recording medium.
Description of Related Art
In many image applications, a disparity estimation map and/or a motion estimation map is required, for example for interpolating intermediate images. In a disparity estimation map each pixel of an image is assigned a value indicating its “depth” in the scene shown in the image. In particular, the disparity estimation map shows the horizontal displacement between a pixel/object in one image and the corresponding pixel/object in the other image of the image pair forming a 3D image. Hence, a disparity map is generated by searching corresponding pixels/objects in both images of a 3D image and calculating the horizontal displacement. This process could also be used for motion estimation with the difference that corresponding pixels/objects are searched in following images and not in a 3D image pair.
It is apparent that the process of generating disparity estimation maps or motion estimation maps is error prone to a certain extent. For example, boundaries of objects could sometimes not be recognized exactly so that the disparity or motion estimation map reflects wrong object boundaries.
In the art there are systems to correct such errors in the disparity/motion estimation maps, for example by marking the correct object boundaries. In such offline video post-processing systems, the user can approximately mark the borders of objects where the disparity map, particularly the values are too imprecise. However, due to certain constraints, the user has to interact as fast as possible so that it is very likely that the user's interaction, namely marking borders of the object, could also be imprecise.
The “background” description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventor(s), to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description which may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly or impliedly admitted as prior art against the present invention.